


Deer In The Headlights

by ArmieJude



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Animal Abuse, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Gore, Graphic Violence, Implied Drug Use, Incest, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Murder, Organ and Blood Fetish, Piquerism, Self Harm, Underage Sex, Vomit, hematolagnia, minor cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 02:57:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12224322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmieJude/pseuds/ArmieJude
Summary: 'A light flashes from behind. Ben turns, and there’s Hux, under the moonlight in his running gear. They need to move the deer.''Ben considers punching him, throwing him to the dirt and slamming his fists into his face, his chest, any part of Hux he could reach. Hux breaches the silence a second faster than him, though. “ There’s nowhere to go in this town, no matter how far you walk. It’s purgatory, and I want out.” “To heaven or hell?” Ben’s face wrinkles, unconvinced by either. “Neither.” '





	Deer In The Headlights

**Author's Note:**

> So. Hello all. I haven't written a fic since middle school, so this is a new thing and I'm unsure how to proceed with this note business. I'm hoping to get chapters up once every couple of weeks, though that's definitely in progress. Feel free to give feedback, I'm curious what you guys think!

Morning, like rosy ivy, snakes its tendrils ‘round the dusty white trellis, sprouting cotton-soft clouds raised toward the sun. Through the rows of sleepy peach orchards, traversing flaking wooden fences and slipshod eves, day’s sprouting, only stopping once its leaflitter scattered across the unswept back patio. Ben’d been there what felt like ages, struck stupid, unable to help himself. A toad burbles irritatedly at his presence; if he’d leaned backward, there it would be, a squat brown ball puffed up to appear more than a handful. He doesn’t. ‘Oh, don’t mind ‘im,’ Uncle Luke crowed once, in attempt to soothe his twin’s ruffled feathers, ‘He’s in a stewin’ mood, that boy. Gotta let ideas simmer ‘till they come together. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.’ Ben’s the thinking type, it seems; been ‘stewin’ since before he understood how much trouble letting his thoughts wander could get him into. 

Not enough room in Hosnia, Tennessee to wander anywhere, not without reaching the outskirts and peering outward into miles and miles of treeline, wondering just where he’d end up if he crossed that city limit. Didn’t take him more than a day after move-in to sniff out that hidden truth. The only sort of people who hung around a town of 900 never saw beyond their own two feet, kicking up dust along the gravel roads and calling that ‘living’. 

Please.

Ben’s legs dangle a foot off of the ground from the patio’s ledge, swinging back and forth aimlessly through heavy air; like everything else about him, they’re overgrown and underweight, stretching painfully into two bony ankles and dexterous toes that splayed outwards, reaching for hot, wet dirt to burrow into. Fourteen years of New Jersey winters stripped fat from muscle, enthusiasm from childish antagonism until there’s only scraps of Leia and Han’s prodigal son left over, the boy who squints upward into the skyline in a failed attempt to map out the sun from scraggly pines. 

Turquoise dust motes dance around beneath his eyelids, the worn brass afterimage of a treeline sunrise shuddering once his eyelashes fluttered open, alerted by the distinct anxiousness of not being fully alone in an empty room. Ben’s brown eyes skate the open backyard, but, unable to pick out his new neighbor, come to rest on the shredded jean hole crowning his left knee, opting for listening instead. 

The deep, resonant burbles of a toad. Purrs and hisses of a motorcycle speeding by in the distance. Irritated squawking of some morning bird, unable to keeps its noisy mouth shut as it shouted to the world about- Ben. Waves of wet air ripple down his left cheek. Good morning, they whisper, we’ve been waiting for you to come back, we missed you so much. His feet, his whole body, his heart freezes over; two leaf-shaped shadows stretch over his left hand, swiveling left and right on casual alert. Back and forth, slowly, dancing, taking him in, wrapping its blankets across his chest… Like… 

‘-grandma out to the woods, no warnin’, jus’ scooped her into the truck an’ set off for nowhere. Sun’s all low, shops’ closin’ for the night. Miss Amidala, pampered gal she was, never been out past fences, ain’t been nowhere else. Now she, she, her daddy kept the ‘tails off the lawn, called ‘em pests, ‘cause God forbid you have deer messin’ up yer lawn. Hah…’ Luke stared at his young nephew through clouds, half-chewed blunt illuminating his bearded smile through the fog. ‘Yer Grandad took a light, they started followin’ a trail up past Star Valley, and, there they was, a whole flock of ‘tails gatherin’ round a pool clearer than Heaven. Poor girl jus’ stood there, stock still, she ain’t never seen so many deer ‘fore. “You wanted to see ‘em, right? Well… s’there, for you. Right there-”’

Right there. 

His lethargic reverie bursts suddenly into reality again once the light trickles over his eyelashes. No, not a dream… recollection of a story he barely remembered. Uncle Luke, other than assisting his mother in relocating all of their shared antiques into the attic, didn’t ration his time between his family and his travels. Ben’s opportunities in meeting him amounted to folding his limber body into a paper crane in order to catch remnants of a story in a beat-to-hell ‘69 Volkswagen van, trying to gulp in fresh air from the cracked window while they bumbled along. Going nowhere, looking nowhere… Sleep eludes him in this busy nothingness.

‘“They gathered here jus’ for you, or, well, I found ‘em walkin’. Deer’re good at feelin’ things,”, He says, and Miss Ami jus’ starts bawlin’ her eyes out all over her Sunday best, like she ain’t seen a more lonesome thing in this whole world. Startled your granddad half to death, that did, so he pulls an arm ‘round her shoulder, shakin’ her. “What’s wrong, darlin’, why’re you cryin?! Do ya wanna go back? S’dark out, we should go back-”’

Way back, his unseen visitor pads into view, staring as cautiously over in his direction as Ben’s eyes could return. He’d swear his own startled reflection, deep purple smudges under his lids and all, blinks back at him, a mirror within a mirror encircled by an unfamiliar familiar gaze. Back in New Jersey, the closest encounter any industrial city boy got to ‘wildlife’ snarled at you before looting your garbage can for a last piece of rotten leftovers, scurrying off with its black-banded tail dragging behind it to go tell its other raccoon buddies about its conquests. He can’t break the staring contest, pawing at his own sleeve, digging his nails into a vulnerable path of skin.

‘And she grabs onto his sleeve, lookin’ crushed beyond belief. “Ain’t it sad, Ani, ain’t it sad… that when ya shoot ‘em, they don’t e’en know that they’re gonna die… they jus’ look at ya, all big-eyed, and then there’s nothin’? S’nobody waitin’ for ‘im when they go, and we gotta rip em up to pieces…” Fawns ‘re watchin’ them from far off, and she’s watchin’ ‘em back, hands all crumpled at her sides. “Ain’t it sad… to have that second of pain and then, just… ain’t it sad?”’

Thick crimson tears pour down from a tawny flank, the earthly kind of crying; even from a distance, Ben can make out the inch-long bullet hole weeping into mussy fur. He’s no sharp shooter himself, but, if he recalled, aren’t male deer meant for hunting? The wounded doe, her skittishness waning slowly under dappled shade, dips her slender muzzle into a brittle patch of thicket, snuffling through dirt methodically. For once, Ben’s presence remains low profile. He blends seamlessly into grass knots and molding wooden stitches. Head drooping, eyelashes trembling to stay awake as his avian shoulders collapse on the layers of splinters separating man from nature. 

Miss Amidala, her head in her hands, singin’ to him in the dark: ‘Ain’t it sad, Ani, ain’t it sad sad sad.’ 

‘“Why would it be sad? Stuff’s gotta die all the time, otherwise, Mom said that there’d be no more room for anybody else. I don’t wanna share my room with a dinosaur,” A younger, cheekier Ben huffs, wrapping his arms ‘round his middle to protect him from any potential reptilian roommates. Uncle Luke just laughs that belly laugh that only uncles could do, full of heartache yet brimming with amusement anyway. Just for his nephew, just for him. “You’re right, kiddo, you don’t gotta worry about the dinos. It ain’t so sad. If nothin’ died, life wouldn’t be worth much.” Two sandpaper hands ruffle through his hair, knocking twigs and knots free from his forest of curls. “We ain’t deer, after all; we know that our time’s comin’. ”’

***

“-When I’ve told you a thousand times that essentially none of this house outside of the rooms is safe, you /still/ just do whatever you want and I-” Her unspoken thought echoes through the silence: ‘I’m tired, Ben.’ Today’s Sunday, after all, lazy Sunday, yet his mother’d probably wandered about the house for at least three hours, deftly weaving her hair into intricate braids single-handedly whilst she clacked away at an assembly line of business emails. A stray smudge of lipstick dots the tip of her nose, one of many, many Skywalker traits too prestigious to be passed on to an accidental son. 

Not enough soggy cornflakes and lukewarm milk in the universe could force down a decade and a half’s worth of bile. 

“Whatever,” Ben mutters into his cereal bowl, as if only the lopsided half-painted dish he’d made in kindergarten could hear him. “Not like it matters.” He’s well and truly done it now; there’s no more egregious an offense than the dreaded W-word, daring an overprotective single mother skilled in political debate to charge through a hidden minefield of unspoken feelings. 

Leia sighs, shifts her ladybug coffee mug carefully away from any possible carnage-- wild gestures compiled a ceramic graveyard miles deep back in Jersey-- and primly folds her paper back into its creased edges. “No, not /whatever/. We’ve only been here for a day and you’ve already started to do the same shit you did back home, and it’s pissing me off. You never give anything a chance, so nobody’s ever going to give you one-”

“You didn’t even let me decide if I wanted to move or not!” An act of parental treachery, no doubt, meant to humiliate and degrade and drag his whole life through the dirt. Ben expects no less. “You never ask me what /I/ want to do, it’s all about you!”

He can hear her teeth grit without looking up; he refuses to meet her expectant gaze, it’s just what she wanted and it’s driving her mad not to be given it.

“Sometimes, it’s not about you, Ben! Sometimes… sometimes, life has other plans, and you have to take them as a blessing rather than constantly fight them tooth and nail. No one’s out to get you, and if you’d just-”

His mouth bites faster than his thoughts could counteract, quick to the punch. “Maybe if I’d just not have been born, we wouldn’t have to be here, right? It would’ve been ‘Leia Organa: Goddamn Superstar Politician’ instead of ‘Leia Organa-Solo: Divorced Wife Who Doesn’t Want To Tell Her Son How She Wishes He Wasn’t Around’, right? No need to take care of something that doesn’t-”

“Ben, stop.” 

“T-that doesn’t even… exist…”

“/Ben/.”

Grimy black splatters trickle down from cabinet to stool, stool to floor, staining their unexpected silence; his mother’s knuckles clung tight beneath the wool folds of her sleepwear. Everything about her’s trembling, shaking, about to crumble apart but unable to find enough momentum to do so; one broken ladybug mug, one coffee-soaked newspaper, and one stony-faced ex-politician covered head to toe in steaming hot Folger’s. His fault. /His/ fault. 

She’s looking, he’s looking, they’re looking together. 

“Ben, look… No, Benjamin Hawthorne Solo, you /need/ to keep looking. Don’t you look away from me.” He’s looking, he’s looking, he is, he swears he is. “You need to go. I need time to clean this up, we need to breathe. I’m not… I’m not angry at you, honey, I’m not. You just… need to go for a little bit, okay?” Chewing, chewing, chewing her lip, digging her eye teeth deep into the center of her mouth in the hopes of splitting it open like a watermelon. Leia’s never been a convincing liar, not as a mom, not as a politician or whomever she’d hoped to be in the future; ‘Don’t give yer mama so much grief, Benny, she’s a real good girl. S’hard for her, since no one’s near as sweet as she is to them, so she’s always let down hard.’ 

Before his mouth parts, ribbons of light catch his face by surprise. He hadn’t spent more than a moment out past the borders of wisteria and half-rotten white fences. Now, whether he likes it or not, Ben has to go. Out there. No, not ‘out’, but ‘away’. “Fine... “ Whether his tone tears into her throat or kisses her on the cheek, he isn’t quite certain. “I’m gonna go. Don’t wait for me for dinner.” 

The shoeless teenage boy strides to the door, phone jammed between his faded checkerboard belt and his lower hip, back turned, facing forward, yet the woman behind him manages to call out one last time.

“Be safe out there.”

Ben doesn’t answer. There’s nothing to say.

***   
To call the swath of tree-ridden, forged-by-fire land tainted by slave blood ‘hot’ constituted a joke rather than an observation; damned sunshine loomed oppressively over crimson soil, daring any living thing to defy its authority. Air stopped working proper down here on the ground, sticking to the back of his throat and gathering water droplets in the crooks of his knees. Doesn’t matter that it’s only 10:30 AM, doesn’t matter that it’s halfway through August, doesn’t even matter that, back home, Mr. Antilles’ maples would be turning ruddy yellow, poised to be whisked away by a fall breeze to locations elsewhere; it’s hotter than hell. 

‘Specially if the wanderer in question didn’t come dressed for fire and brimstone. Beads of sweat curled around his upper lip, pearly around his ghost of a mustache that he refused to shave out of pure obstinance rather than attachment; if his mother made a fuss about it, then, of course, on his body it would stay. Maroon-tinged grit unfurls behind him as Ben and his bare feet shuffle along a path that doesn’t look like it’s been walked on in the last century. A dog barks far-off. It’s a low ‘woof’ warning trespassers to stay away. S’not like he’s in any mood to fight back, not to some dumb hound dog. Ben settles for chucking a stone over a nearby fence, watching it disintegrate into chalk before landfall. Damn it all. 

“Motherfucker! Goddamnit! What the hell!” Every spare vulgarity his father imparted upon him rang out through the silence, demanding mourning doves and cautious barks take in his strange dominance. Ben crushes the rocks under his foot over and over and over and over and over and over and… the fire’s gone. What remained of his temper flickered out, oppressive heat winning the fight for once. Grit coats his exposed ankles, chalky with sweat. Fortunately, nature can handle far more intense outbursts than a teenage boy’s unburdened tantrum. Ben loathed it for that. Its forgiveness scratched at his skin more insistently than the chalk could. 

Bloodhound growls sing to him as he passes.

A couple of feet ahead, a traffic light blinks on and off, hypnotic in its indecision between red and green, green and yellow, before returning to red again, swinging loosely without the slightest hint of a breeze. A gossipy crow chortles out a laugh; or, rather, its beak stretches into a yawn, echoing a raspy, croaking giggle from a flock of older men perched on the edges of a porch. ‘AP’s Truckstop’, rusty neon sign aside, couldn’t be considered much more than a lean-to. Thick spools of smoke unfurl into the street. 

“Aw, hell, city boy’s comin’ over to say hello, y’all. Don’tcha scare him none,” One good-ole-boy whispers to another, a stage whisper that whistles through his tobacco teeth. His bush of curly gray hair crowns his leathery face, which crinkles when he smiles. An old couch of a man, busted up and ripped to shreds, but comfy, familiar. Ben’s leg hair stands on end.

He takes two steps forward. One half-step back. Shuffling in the dirt.

The couch laughs again.“You lookin’ for somethin’, son? We don’t bite ‘less you bite first.” His friend the lamp, a beanpole man in a grungy tanktop and a bucket hat stretching over his eyebrows, snickers under his cleft lip. “You move down here?”

“Yeah... “

“Where’re you stayin’? Ain’t too many houses ‘round here ready to move in. How’re you likin’ it?” Each of those questions fly by him with only silence in return; no one dared to breach his walled-off, bitter appearance often, and Ben’s less inclined to trust them the more they dared to scale his unsteady temper.

Irritation blooms red on his cheeks. “That’s none of your business.”

Which is, apparently, the funniest joke in the world; country people really did have the heat go to their brains, it seems. The third of the trio lets out a whistle, too masked in overhanging shadows to get a look at him properly. “Relax, kid, for fuck’s sake. We all got routes to drive down later on, and we’s jus’ here for talkin’,” The smoky shadow drawls sweetly, his voice a bit too high for the bulky outline Ben could make out from his side. “Folks likes shootin’ the breeze. Ain’t no reason to cause trouble. C’mere and introduce yourself proper.” 

Strains of rickety guitar filter through a half-open window. Its chords ran ghostly up his ribcage, pulling on his heart. Damn.

He nestles himself in the dirty back-road refuse piling up, drying leaves fluffy as down under Ben’s fingers. He couldn’t keep them still. “Up there, on Timber Crossing. The one with the azaleas on the fence, the blue ones.” Uncle Luke planted them years back, photo albums lousy with half-pressed petals crumbling to dust; neither of the Skywalker duo knew how to preserve what was originally meant to last only a moment. Ben’s shoe crushes a stray clover leaf beneath its treads.

The peanut gallery’s usual outbursts of amusement damper this time around, the couch’s folded grin heavy under the weight of an unspoken conversation. Looks left. Looks right. He motions to Ben hazardously, “Didn’t think anyone lived in that house anymore. You ever see anythin’...wonky up there? Walkin’ around, talkin’ to ya?”

“Like a ghost?” The word tastes bitter, artificial on his tongue, which wrinkles his lip in disgust.

“N’aww, n’aww, like-”

“Like you’re goin’ cold,” The shadowed trucker interrupts his comrade smoothly, saving him the trouble of fumbling for words he didn’t know how to reach for, “And you feel like you’re jus’ on the edge of rememberin’ an ol’ memory. Tiny pieces of somebody reachin’ for ya, too close but too far away…” The couch and the lamp peer at him in agreement, as if he’d voiced some hive-mind request never to be mentioned allowed. “Not like that ghost chasers TV shit, real bits of someone else.” 

Ben huffs. “Ghosts aren’t real, your brain just wants to remember someone and make them important. No reason to look for something that isn’t there.” 

“Trust me, kid…” The third onlooker leans forward into the light, his deep brown eyes sunken back into his rounded forehead, like his eyes couldn’t quite stand being so close to the outside world. “The real things you should be afraid of linger around, too bad to really go away for more ‘an a minute. You should be careful.” 

A neighboring crow, disturbed in its reverie, takes to the air with barely-perceptible gasps beneath its wings as it croaked out a farewell to whomever may be listening; Ben is, turning his headful of curly black hair away from the shack to the air. Concern shudders gelatinous in his stomach, sloshing back and forth as he wobbles to his feet. There’s no reasoning with them, no reasoning with anyone in this backwater. Sweat and fear and baptism by fire turned them crazy, searching for ghosts in the attic. 

He excuses himself without another word, dusting off stray feathers before turning his head and stomping forward over every cloverleaf and loose rock daring to keep him from escaping the cause of his irritation. Shouts of ‘Wait kid, come back!’ don’t stick more than a centimeter deep in his teenage angst. Warm air pools in the pit of his gut beneath the ‘Yavin River Ahead!’ wooden sign, the Y ready to fall at any moment. 

‘C’mon, Benny boy, let’s go look around. Wanna go splash around a bit?!’

For once, Uncle Luke, he really does. Anything to shake off this heat.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, follow me on tumblr:  
> @armiejude  
> For occasional content updates


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